Two Songs of a Fool

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1919from The Wild Swans at Coole32 lines

I

A speckled cat and a tame hareEat at my hearthstoneAnd sleep there;And both look up to me aloneFor learning and defenceAs I look up to Providence.

I start out of my sleep to thinkSome day I may forgetTheir food and drink;Or, the house door left unshut,The hare may run till it’s foundThe horn’s sweet note and the tooth of the hound.

I bear a burden that might well tryMen that do all by rule,And what can IThat am a wandering witted foolBut pray to God that He easeMy great responsibilities.

II

I slept on my three-legged stool by the fire,The speckled cat slept on my knee;We never thought to enquireWhere the brown hare might be,And whether the door were shut.Who knows how she drank the windStretched up on two legs from the mat,Before she had settled her mindTo drum with her heel and to leap:Had I but awakened from sleepAnd called her name she had heard,It may be, and had not stirred,That now, it may be, has foundThe horn’s sweet note and the tooth of the hound.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

A fool frets over the cat and hare in his care; the hare escapes.

A self-described "wandering witted fool" keeps a speckled cat and a tame hare by his hearth. Both depend on him, as he depends on Providence. In the first song he wakes in fear that he may forget to feed them, or leave the door open so that the hare runs off to the hunter's horn and the hound's teeth. He prays to be eased of his "great responsibilities". In the second song the fear has come true. He dozed by the fire with the cat on his knee, the door was open, and the hare has gone. He imagines her rising on her hind legs to sniff the wind, then leaping away, and blames himself for not calling her back.

Lines to remember

A speckled cat and a tame hare

The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound.

My great responsibilities.

Line by line

Lines 1 to 6Two dependants
The cat and hare eat and sleep at his "hearthstone" and look to him "For learning and defence". The last line widens the picture: he looks up to Providence as they look up to him, a chain of care running from animals to God.
Lines 7 to 12Night fears
He starts out of sleep with worry: he may forget "Their food and drink", or leave "the house door" open. Then the hare might run until she finds "The horn's sweet note and the tooth of the hound", a line that sets the beauty of the hunt beside its cruelty.
Lines 13 to 18A fool's prayer
Even men who "do all by rule" would find this burden hard. As a "wandering witted fool" he can only pray that God will ease "My great responsibilities". The grand phrase is comic from a fool with two pets, yet the feeling behind it is real.
Lines 19 to 23Asleep by the fire
The second song begins after the event. He slept on his "three-legged stool", the cat asleep on his knee, and neither thought to wonder where the hare was "And whether the door were shut". The cosy scene hides the lapse that the first song feared.
Lines 24 to 28The hare's escape
He imagines her at the door: she "drank the wind / Stretched up on two legs", sniffing the air, until she "settled her mind / To drum with her heel and to leap". The close observation of a hare's habits makes her going vivid.
Lines 29 to 32Too late
If he had woken and called her name, she might have heard and stayed. Instead she "now, it may be, has found" the horn and hound. The line from the first song returns, now as a likely fact rather than a fear.

Themes

Responsibility

The fool carries a "burden" that "might well try / Men that do all by rule". His care for two small creatures is set within a larger order: he looks "up to Providence" as they look up to him. The poem takes the weight of caring for others seriously, even when the carer is a fool.

Guilt and failure

The second song is a confession. The fear of the first song, "the house door left unshut", has come about through his own sleep. "Had I but awakened from sleep" is the voice of someone replaying a mistake he cannot undo.

Freedom and danger

The tame hare is safe indoors but still wild at heart. She "drank the wind" before she leapt. Outside lies both freedom and "the tooth of the hound". The repeated last line makes the open door a choice between a sheltered life and a dangerous one.

Context

The poem was collected in the enlarged edition of The Wild Swans at Coole, published by Macmillan in 1919, beside "Another Song of a Fool" and "The Saint and the Hunchback". The fool is one of the figures of the moon's last phases in "The Phases of the Moon", printed close by.

The songs are often read biographically, with the speckled cat usually taken as Yeats's new wife George and the hare as Iseult Gonne, for whom he felt responsible in these years. The poem itself names no one, and works fully as a fable of care and neglect.

Form

Two songs. The first has three six-line stanzas mixing long and very short lines, rhymed ababcc ("hare", "hearthstone", "there", "alone", then a couplet). The second is a single fourteen-line stanza in looser rhyme. Both end on the same long line about the horn and the hound, which works like a refrain and ties the fear to its outcome.